It will come as no suprise to many that one of my favourite characters on TV at the moment is ‘Adam Sackler’ from HBO’s Girls and played by Adam Driver.
Not a show to watch if you are easily offended!

Take a look at this little mashup from Youtube.
It shows the evolution of Adam from season 1 through to season 5.
Notice the lovely thick black hair in the last clip. He went from filming this to filming for Star Wars episode VIII so I would say that Kylo still has his glorious locks for ep VIII.

Anyway, seeing this clip got me thinking about favourites old and new which has given me my little project for the day.

I don’t watch as much TV as I used to, I tend to stick to films as there is more of an immediate gratification in the end of a movie.
You know the outcome in around 2 hours without having it dragged out over 13 or 24 weeks with a hiatus in the middle!!!

Except of course for Star Wars that likes to drag a story over a 3 film arc and makes us salivate for the slightest hint of what’s in store for our favourite character….. but I’m not bitter about that one at all!!!!

………. anyway! Let’s see.
Another show that I have been keeping up with over the last few weeks is ‘Lucifer’
It’s another cop/buddy show with a bit of a twist in that the buddy happens to be the Devil who’s taking a vacation from his usual job, much to the chagrin of God.

The British actor, Tom Ellis, has taken on the role and with his looks, his charm and his verbal diarrhoea, he does a brilliant job!

Joel Kinnaman is another current favourite but he likes to keep us waiting between projects!!
Suicide Squad is his next movie which I’m hoping will do big things for his career.

He has, however, broken his current drought season with his appearance on Season 4 of House of Cards.

I’m really looking forward to seeing his character do battle with the Underwoods in Season 5 and August 5th cannot come quick enough for Suicide Squad.

Right, time to get the brain in gear and think of favourite characters of the past.
I was still very young in the 70’s but I remember catching re-runs of Star Trek on BBC2 in the early evenings.
Chips was another favourite from a Saturday afternoon and Starsky and Hutch was one to stay up late for and watch with Mum!
So some of my earliest favourite characters were…. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Poncherello (Eric Estrada) and Hutch (David Soul)

There are two honorable mentions from the 70’s
After the success of Star Wars at the cinema, two TV shows jumped on the band wagon.
Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

Starbuck and Apollo made a fantastic team and Captain Buck Rogers was a cutie.
Battlestar Galactica has since had a wonderful re-boot although for some reason, Starbuck wasn’t quite as attractive to me! Apollo on the other hand………

We are sadly still waiting for someone to re-boot Buck Rogers!!
It’s a shame because it would be fantastic with today’s special effects.

Then along came the 80’s and by now I had my own TV. A little black and white portable 14 inch!
It was easier for me to watch what I wanted as I was not restricted to watching what my parents were watching.

The 80’s were…. not exactly something to be proud of!
The fashion was dubious, the acting was…… dubious….. the special effects were cheap!
All that said, it had some of the most iconic TV shows ever!

The ‘A’ Team, Airwolf, The Fall Guy, ‘V’, Simon and Simon, Miami Vice, Knight Rider, Magnum, Automan, TJ Hooker, Street Hawk and just making it in the tail end of the 80’s was Quantum Leap.

Then at the tail end of the 80’s something magical happened.
They re-booted Star Trek!!
Star Trek the Next Generation made it to our screens and my early earning days were spent at coventions and collector fairs.

The 90’s were just filled with amazing shows and science fiction/fantasy seemed to be the order of the day. This was music to my ears!!
All the more reason to attend conventions and collector shows!

The first incarnation of The Flash, X-Files, Friends, Xena-Warrior Princess, E.R., Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Stargate SG1, Earth Final Conflict, Babylon 5, Charmed, Farscape, Highlander, Hornblower, J.A.G., The Pretender, Space Above and Beyond.
These are just the ones I can remember right now, I’m sure there were loads more!
All of these shows spawned some little crush or slight obsession.

David Duchovny in the X-Files was just lovely, David Boreanaz as Angel/Angelus in Buffy the Vampire Slayer was simply amazing but Angelus was always more intriguing.

Robert Leeshock in Earth Final Conflict was attention grabbing (and bottom grabbing, but that’s another story entirely!!), Michael O,Hare in Babylon 5 was a mature lovely and Michael T Weiss as the pretender was just brilliant.

Highlander spawned not 1, but 2 obsessions. Adrian Paul and Peter Wingfield.
So obsessed was I at the time that I actually ran the UK side of the Peter Wingfield fan club for a while, until work and family became too much, so I had to give it up, but not before I had the chance to interview him for the club magazine and organise a group meeting with him at a convention down in Felixtowe.

Hornblower, J.A.G. and Space Above and Beyond also have major mentions from this decade. J.A.G ended up running for 10 years after a bit of a rocky start but unfortunately Space: Above and Beyond was a bit ahead of it’s time and got cancelled after it’s first season. Had it come just a few years later, it may have been a different story.

Now we reach the naughties and TV watching kind of went a little silly.
We still had some cracking shows but I didn’t watch them quite so religiously. There were just too many to keep up with.
I think that around this time they also got a little more sophisticated. Audiences expected more from their viewing.
Heroes, John Doe, CSI, CSI Miami, CSI New York, NCIS, Prison Break, Stargate Atlantis, Smallville, 24, The Killing, Lost, Rome, House, The Tudors, True Blood, Psych, Grey’s Anatomy, Bones, Firefly, Chuck, Jericho.

Heroes was a show that took off like a rocket. It had so much potential but after getting caught in the middle of a writer’s strike, it lost it’s momentum and never really recovered.
John Doe was a fantastic show about a man with no memory of who he is but he has the knowledge of the world stashed in his head. This show ended after just one season and frustratingly ended on a whopping cliff hanger!!! The star of the show went on to star in Prison Break.

Historical dramas like Rome and The Tudors where a ‘must see’.
The Tudors in particular was memorable because of the casting of Jonathan Rhys Meyers and the future Superman, Henry Cavill.

Smallville brought us the teenage years of Clark Kent and ran for 10 years and went on to spawn current favourites, Green Arrow and The Flash. Firefly brought us the crew of Serenity. An amazing show that stunned it’s audience after it was cancelled after it’s first season. The troops rallied and although they didn’t get a series continuation, they did get a movie to tie up all the loose ends.

Speaking of shows kicking fans into a frenzy, Jericho was one such show.
It told the story of a nuclear attack on the US and the survivors and residents of a small town called Jericho.

When this show got cancelled after it’s first season the fans got organised and started a campaign that eventually lead to a second season to tie up the loose ends.
The campaign was fenomenal!!
As stated in a past blog….

In the finale to the season when asked for the towns surrender Skeet Ulrich simply replies. ‘Nuts!’So when the show was cancelled some bright spark on the Jericho forum came up with the slogan ‘nuts to CBS’ for cancelling the show.Outrage on the forum turned into a letter writing campaign that suddenly turned into a bombardment of CBS at their New York and LA offices……but not with letters!No no no, the fans were a little more creative and started sending peanuts.They got organized and started pooling their money on a site called http://www.nutsonline.com/jerichoThis company started sending truck loads of peanuts to CBS on a daily basis along with letters of support for the show.

We’re not just talking a few bags of fan mail here, we’re talking serious amounts of ‘Nuts to CBS’To date they have had a grand total of over 20 tons delivered…..yes you did read that right.

20 TONS!!!!!The one day record stands at 10,000 pounds that hit CBS on the 29th May.The campaign was swift and decisive and successful.

This blog is becoming incredibly long and could keep on going but I think it’s time to start wrapping things up.

So, we are now in a world where special effects allow us to do anything and as an audience we have come to expect our special effects to be good but we also expect good story telling.
So occasional romps into fantasy are interspersed with cerebral shows that make you think.
Arrow and Flash as opposed to The Killing and House of Cards.

There are of course, so many more than have been mentioned here.
I can hear some of you now….”what about Vampire Diaries?, what abour Enterprise?, what about Eureka?”…etc.
I could quite literally keep writing and searching for pictures all night but I think this gives a good idea of the kind of shows I grew up with and the kind of things I like to watch currently!!
It’s a bit eclectic but that’s me and right now anything that takes my mind off of Star Wars is very welcome.
Seriously!! My mind is mush thinking about all the possibilities for the next movie and as you can see from my countdown clock at the top right of this blog, we have a gut wrenching 21 months to go!!